ESCONDIDO  It was a thorny scene Friday morning on the banks of Lake Hodges, where a dozen khaki-shirted Safari Park employees were planting cactuses on a gentle slope in view of Interstate 15.

“You just have to be careful,” Matt Pauchnick, a park horticulturist, said as he gingerly lowered another cactus into the ground.

Across several acres overlooking the dry, inland reaches of the lake, a team of San Diego Zoo employees and volunteers were finishing a six-month project that saw more than 2,500 young cactuses taking root in the San Dieguito River Park.

The goal, said research coordinator Sara Motheral, was to restore critical habitat for two threatened species of birds, the California Gnatcatcher and the coastal cactus wren.

Park ranger Bryan Ward said that the ferocious Witch Creek Fire of 2007 tore through about two-thirds of the park’s 94,000 acres, including this particular hillside, which as of last week was barren save for a few weeds and withered grass.

“A lot of it turned into just scorched earth, and dead, burnt sticks in the ground,” Ward said. “Because of that, a lot of weeds came up and grew faster than the native plants could grow.”

“If you look at the aerial photos, before and after the fire, there was a huge change,” Motheral added. “There was a lot more shrub cover (previously), and you can tell there were more cactuses here.”

The fire was especially bad news for the cactus wren, which Motheral said was already in decline “due to loss of habitat from urbanization.”

Funded by a grant from SANDAG, the replanting was spearheaded by the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, which in 2012 harvested cactus pads for the project from the 800-acre biodiversity reserve adjacent to the Safari Park.

The reserve is notable for its “massive patch of cactus” visible from Highway 78, and it was from those mature plants that the clippings were taken for the restoration around Lake Hodges, said Motheral.

The seedlings were then grown at a Safari Park nursery for a year and a half before transplanting on the slopes of Bernardo Mountain.

“We wanted them fairly large, because in the past, we’ve had problems with rabbits and wood rats eating the smaller cactuses. Larger cactus is more resistant to those herbivores,” Motheral explained. “They’ll get pretty big — up to two meters tall, sometimes. That’s what we’re hoping for here.”

To protect against the cactus spines, most of the workers on Friday wore special leather sleeves, but, Motheral said, “You still don’t want to hug a cactus in these.”

Volunteers Steve and Sue Rose said they remember the scene after the fire wiped the hills clean in 2007. The couple live just over a ridge from where Friday morning’s work was taking place, and as he backfilled soil around a cactus, Steve Rose recalled the native scrub brush that used to cover these banks.

“We love the Lake Hodges area, and it’s a great organization,” he said, referring to the Institute for Conservation Research. “We both love the animals—the plants, the animals, it all ties together.”

Planting cactus plants would not seem to be anybody’s favorite job, but Safari Park horticulture manager Linda Post said that for her team, Friday morning was a welcome departure from the day-to-day park maintenance duties.

“The normal, incredible work they do—things like maintaining the habitat and the guest areas—those are very important, but here, they get the opportunity to be hands-on with conservation in the field,” Post said. “They could be at the Safari Park, doing their regular jobs, but they have chosen to come out and do this.”

Just before 9 a.m., hunting for a new pair of gloves after a cactus spine lodged itself in one of her others, she acknowledged that cactus isn’t the most desirable plant to handle.

“Let’s just say, it’s a great plant to look at,” said Post with a laugh. “Every plant has its place in this world.”